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The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed's Chronicles

Edited by Paulina Kewes, Ian W. Archer, and Felicity Heal

A groundbreaking study of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland, which was a principal source for Shakespeare's history plays

Brings together the perspectives of literature, history, literature, religion, and the classics to provides a rounded view of the Chronicles

Innovative juxtaposition of themes and topics, which include the relationship of the work to medieval and early modern historiography; formal properties; audience; attitudes to politics, religion, and society; and literary appropriations

The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed's Chronicles

Edited by Paulina Kewes, Ian W. Archer, and Felicity Heal

Description

The Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (1577, 1587), issued under the name of Raphael Holinshed, was the crowning achievement of Tudor historiography, and became the principal source for the historical writings of Spenser, Daniel and, above all, Shakespeare. While scholars have long been drawn to Holinshed for its qualities as a source, they typically dismissed it as a baggy collection of materials, lacking coherent form and analytical insight. This condescending verdict has only recently given way to an appreciation of the literary and historical qualities of these chronicles.

The Handbook is a major interdisciplinary undertaking which gives the lie to Holinshed's detractors, and provides original interpretations of a book that has lacked sustained academic scrutiny. Bringing together leading specialists in a variety of fields - literature, history, religion, classics, bibliography, and the history of the book - the Handbook demonstrates that the Chronicles powerfully reflect the nature of Tudor thinking about the past, about politics and society, and about the literary and rhetorical means by which readers might be persuaded of the truth of narrative. The volume shows how distinctive it was for one book to chronicle the history of three nations of the British archipelago.

The various sections of the Handbook analyze the making of the two editions of the Chronicles; the relationship of the work to medieval and early modern historiography; its formal properties, genres and audience; attitudes to politics, religion, and society; literary appropriations; and the parallel descriptions and histories of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. The result is a seminal study that shows unequivocally the vitality and complexity of the chronicle form in the late sixteenth century.

The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed's Chronicles

Edited by Paulina Kewes, Ian W. Archer, and Felicity Heal

Author Information

Paulina Kewes is Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Jesus College, Oxford, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Her research interests focus on early modern drama, politics, and historiography. She is the author of Authorship and Appropriation: Writing for the Stage in England, 1660-1710 (1998) and 'That Great Matter of Succession' and Elizabethan Political Culture (2012) and, editor or co-editor of Plagiarism in Early Modern England (2003), The Uses of History in Early Modern England (2006), and The Question of Succession in Late Elizabethan England (2013).

Ian W. Archer has been Fellow and Tutor in History at Keble College, Oxford since 1991. His primary research interests lie in the history of early modern London, and he has also published on history and memory. He is a Literary Director of the Royal Historical Society.

Felicity Heal is an Emeritus Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. Her research interests lie in the religious history of Britain and Ireland during the Reformation, in the social history of the gentry, and in gift giving and reciprocity in early modern England. She has written extensively on all these subjects. She is consultant editor for the sixteenth-century section of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed's Chronicles

Edited by Paulina Kewes, Ian W. Archer, and Felicity Heal

Reviews and Awards

"This book is a major boon for Shakespeare specialists, who should have it in their institutional library, if not on their personal bookshelf." --Shakespeare Quarterly

"The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed's Chronicles is a fascinating collection of essays. ... It will be a vital reference work for scholars for years to come and in particular for those writing on Elizabethan literature and drama." --Renaissance Quarterly

"This is a superb collection of essays.... [T]his excellent work bridges digital humanities with printed results, creating a volume useful for scholars and students in a multiplicity of early modern fields of study." --Sixteenth Century Journal

The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed's Chronicles

Edited by Paulina Kewes, Ian W. Archer, and Felicity Heal

From Our Blog

Where did Shakespeare obtain material for his English history plays? The obvious answer would be to say that he drew on the second edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (1587), a massive work numbering no fewer than 3,500,000 words that gave rise to more Renaissance plays than any other book, ancient or modern.